Jackson's girl a red carpet stunner

Peter Jackson's daughter Katie catches the cameras

STUNNER: Peter Jackson with his 16-year-old daughter Katie on the red carpet.

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The wide-eyed child from The Lord of the Rings has blossomed into a red carpet talking point.

Katie Jackson, who played small children in all three Rings movies, accompanied father Sir Peter yesterday on what was her coming-out event.

The 16-year-old quickly caught the eye of the television cameras, and became a hot topic on Twitter. "Katie Jackson looks amazing!" wrote one, while Casey Goranson tweeted: "Katie Jackson has become a beautiful young woman. She's gonna have to take fencing lessons fend off the suitors!"

Katie said she was looking forward to a first glimpse of her dad's movie, after he convinced her to wait for the premiere.

"He wanted it to be completely finished."

She said growing up while her father and mother, Fran Walsh, worked on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit for years at a time was "incredible".

She got to know Sir Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood when she was only a toddler.

"I'm a big Tolkien fan myself so it's great to have a whole family that are Tolkien-obsessed."

Asked if she had any aspirations of joining her father in the movie industry, she said with a laugh: "You never know. I might carry it on."

"It would be good, it would be fantastic. She's extremely clever," her father said.

Jackson also praised Wellington for responding in such great numbers for yesterday's premiere.

"The home town has turned out again. I thought the premiere for The Return of the King would be a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, but it's just such a great feeling to be a Wellington film-maker.

"You spend two years with this narrow focus on your film and in a way you're trying to keep everybody out. We had security and you don't want people to know what you're doing the majority of the time.

"Yet you get to that moment where you hand the film over and 100,000 come out, so that's like the world has suddenly flipped upside down."

Jackson has two more Hobbit movies to complete, and is working on a script for the next Tintin film, which he will direct.